


the one before the one with the flower crown

by nokomisfics



Series: the punk!phil pastel!dan 'verse [2]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: M/M, Phan - Freeform, Unoriginal Fic Names Part Two, alternatively known as how Dumb can you get krys, i also need to write proper smut for it, man i love this verse, pastel!dan, punk!phil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-14
Updated: 2015-07-14
Packaged: 2018-04-09 07:36:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4339667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nokomisfics/pseuds/nokomisfics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>prequel to the one with the flower crown. dan is the new kid and phil just finds him really fucking pretty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the one before the one with the flower crown

Phil doesn’t know what it is about that quiet new kid that has him so hooked.

He’s not new, per se. He’s been around for months now, having moved into the house beside Phil’s during the summer. It had been a bad summer and Phil’d been looking for something new to focus on, and then there was Daniel with his messy black hair and high-pitched, eternally excited voice, talking loudly into the phone at odd hours of the night in the bedroom opposite Phil’s and there was something about him that always made Phil grin, or twitch, or… something.

In the beginning of Year Seven, Dan is in his homeroom and Phil wants to go up to him and say hi, we’re neighbours, but he can’t exactly do that, can he?

“Dude,” says Nicholas on day two of Year Seven. “You’re staring at him again. It’s becoming a little bit creepy.”

Phil redirects his attention to Nicholas and wonders idly how the boy can even articulate clearly with that much of hamburger in his mouth. “Staring at who?”

“Daniel Howell.”

“Oh.” Phil shrugs, then goes back to staring at the boy in question.

He isn’t exactly surprised that Dan’s become fast friends with Amy Stroup. Amy’s the kind of person that doesn’t really have a squad of her own, but she goes around and talks to everybody and she seems nice enough. Presently she’s chomping down on french fries and saying something with her hands that has Dan in stitches. And the boy is clutching his stomach, throwing his head back and practically howling. Howell’s howling, thinks Phil, and huffs back his laughter. He’s funny. Dan could laugh at his jokes, too.

Phil all of a sudden doesn’t like Amy all that much.

“You’re doing it again,” says Nicholas, infuriated perhaps, and Phil ignores him. (Again.) He looks around his cafeteria table, at the people he calls his friends. They’re all dressed in black and nobody’s laughing. Phil frowns and looks down at his food, and thinks again of Dan Howell and his dimpled grin.

“Hi, we’re neighbours.” He walks up to the boy after school and fucking says it, those exact words.

Dan glances up and his cheeks are instantly red, fuck. Phil is at the threshold of apologising when Dan opens his mouth and says, timidly, “Yeah, hey. I’ve seen you around.”

Dan’s in the process of walking home, so Phil casually invites himself to join him. “Yeah,” he says stupidly. “You’re new here, right?” Looking at Dan, at his puffy cheeks and silly brown hair, has become a bit too much so he looks away instead. It’s been a pretty autumn so far and Phil wonders if Dan’s been to the park yet.

“Right,” says Dan. Phil flounders, not exactly sure how to continue the conversation (he wants to though, he wants to so desperately) but that’s fine, because Dan continues it himself. “You?”

“No.” Phil laughs. “I’ve lived here my whole life.” Then he wonders if his laugh was too loud, too jarring, if adding that second part was even necessary, and he turns back to look at Dan to see the boy’s looking away, too. His cheeks are a pleasant shade of scarlet.

“Must be nice,” says Dan. “It’s a pretty place.”

Phil nods. Pretty as you, he thinks, and it’s at the tip of his tongue but he doesn’t say it. Because Phil isn’t gay. He just. Wants to wrap Dan up in the Winnie the Pooh blanket that his sister got for her birthday. And tuck a flower behind his ear, or something.

They get to Dan’s house first. Dan says something that sounds like bye and Phil says see you, lamely, stupidly. Then Dan disappears into his house and Phil heaves out a sigh. He didn’t even get to make Dan laugh.

So Phil tries again the next day. Dan’s already a bit away from the school, so Phil runs to catch up with him and says, “Knock knock.”

Dan looks alarmed for a moment, and then says “Who’s there?” with a really, really faint grin.

“Who?”

“Who who?” replies Dan, looking adorably confused.

“Didn’t know you were an owl.”

Dan cracks up then, laughing loudly and then clapping his hand over his mouth and saying “That was stupid” from behind it. But Phil shrugs, because he got Dan to laugh and he doesn’t really feel that stupid anymore.

So it kind of. Begins. Every day, after school, he waits at the front double doors for Dan to appear, and stands to the side while he says goodbye to Amy Stroup and the rest of the people he’s come to call his friends, and then they walk back together.

+

Things kind of change after a couple of years. There are suddenly rules about who you can hang out with and who you can’t, and everybody seems to know that people like Phil don’t hang out with people like Dan. Phil doesn’t get it but, okay, he complies. (After the first day of Year Ten he goes to meet Dan like he did the whole of last year, and then thinks better of it and walks back with Nicholas instead.)

He doesn’t miss how Dan looks at him sometimes, in the hallways and during Chemistry, which is the only class they have together now. He doesn’t miss the confusion and curiosity in his chocolate brown eyes. Once, Phil walks past Dan deliberately and brushes their shoulders together, sort-of by accident. To sort-of tell him that Phil’s still here, just not like he used to be.

Halfway through Year Ten, Nicholas pulls Phil into a side alley after school and digs out a cigarette from his pocket. “I really don’t - “ Phil begins, because that’s what he was taught to do, and he thrusts the cig back at Nicholas, who just looks at him and shrugs. Then he leans against the brick wall and lights it, bringing it to his lips and giving it a puff. The smell of nicotine quickly floods Phil’s senses and he looks away, disgusted.

The next week, he joins him.

It becomes easy. He finds solace in rock music, familiarity in a cigarette between his lips. He watched Nicholas get his first tattoo, an upside down cross on his fleshy upper arm, and knows immediately that he’d like one of his own. It isn’t too difficult, after that, to become one of ‘those people’. The bad guys. The type Dan should stay away from.

When Phil gets the dragon tattoo on the side of his neck (and it hurts like a bitch, Jesus fuck), he begins avoiding Dan completely.

He finds bars that let him in without ID, and he begins coming home drunk. If his parents hear him stumbling in at odd hours of the morning they don’t say anything, and he likes it this way. He still likes pretty things, like his sister’s Winnie the Pooh blanket and Dan Howell, but he likes other things now too. And that’s fine, he thinks.

That’s fine.

Year Ten is almost over when there’s a knocking on his window, in the middle of the night, and he wakes up swearing loudly.

“What the fuck?” he demands, pulling open his window and sticking his head out, almost convinced he’s dreaming. Until he almost head-bangs Dan Howell, who is outside his window, what the fuck.

“How are you doing that?” is the next thing that comes out of Phil’s mouth, this time a little subdued. He watches Dan crawl backwards and onto his side of the house, and then he realises they have conjoining ledges, which is. Okay. That’s a little bit cool.

“The ledges touch,” says Dan simply, following up the words with a little shrug. He rubs at his eyes and then sits cross-legged, peeking at Phil with a little grin on his face. “Kinda cool, right?”

“Yeah?” Phil shakes his head, runs a hand through his hair. (Still kind of convinced he’s dreaming, actually.)

“Come on out,” Dan goes on. “It’s chilly. Sorry, did I wake you up?”

Phil stares at him for a moment. Dan’s wearing a faded black Starbucks t-shirt over blue Donald Duck pyjamas (Jesus Christ) and he looks really skinny, skinnier than he used to be back when. Back when Phil would walk him home after school and try his best to make him smile, sometimes laugh. A draft picks up and ruffles Dan’s hair, brown and curly, and Phil’s gotten badder over the years but Dan is still… Dan’s still Dan.

“No,” he says finally. Then he pushes the window open and crawls out, shuts it behind him and sits cross-legged on the ledge. The bricks dig into his thighs (he’s just wearing briefs but it’s too late to change now, oh well) but he figures he’ll get used to it after a while. He watches Dan, who’s watching the sky. “You okay?” he asks.

“What?” Dan looks at him. “Yeah. You?”

“Yeah.” Phil shrugs, feeling a little bit bewildered because he wasn’t expecting Dan to shoot that back.

“Long time no talk,” Dan adds hesitantly, before going back to stargazing.

“Yeah,” echoes Phil quietly. He looks down at his fingers, splays them over his bare thighs and then counts just to make sure he can, that this isn’t a dream. It isn’t.

“Sorry for waking you up,” says Dan, and when Phil looks at him he’s got a little grin playing on his face.

Phil chuckles. “It’s fine. This ledge thing - I’ve never noticed it before.”

“Yeah, neither have I.” Dan’s grinning properly now, toothily. Phil filled again with the overwhelming desire to tuck a flower behind his ear and wrap him in a blanket, so he balls his hands into fists and sits on them. Just in case he does something stupid. “Weird, right?”

“Right.” Phil nods.

And then: “You stopped walking me home.”

Dan says it quickly, in a rush, and then his eyes fly shut immediately afterwards and his forehead crinkles up, oh god.

Phil has to make a conscious effort not to crawl across the edges and pull Dan onto his lap. Fuck, he really isn’t properly awake yet. “Yeah,” he says quietly, clears his throat, looks away. “Sorry. I’m sorry, about that.”

There’s a pause, and then Dan says, “It’s fine, I think. Things change.”

“They do.” Phil shrugs his shoulders, feels a little helpless. It’s a tad too fucking late for this, he thinks listlessly.

“You have a tattoo now.”

The way Dan says it makes something thump in Phil’s chest, soft and warm. He runs a finger down the side of his neck and says, “Well observed.”

“Shut up.” Dan laughs then, and Phil thinks maybe the awkwardness is over for now. “I want to get one too.”

“What?” Phil’s shaking his head before he registers it. “No, no way. You can’t get a tattoo.”

“Why not?” Dan’s pouting, fuck, those eyes. Fuck those eyes. “I can get a tattoo just like you can.”

And Phil doesn’t really know how to say that Dan’s too precious for a tattoo, too pure for one, so he just drops it, grins resignedly at Dan instead, and the boy smiles back, and then Phil finds himself wondering why they’ve never done this before. It’s been nearly a year since they’ve last spoken, and it all could have been avoided if they’d just. Talked this way.

“We should do this more,” Phil finds himself saying. And then Dan’s nodding earnestly, his dark eyes shining.

“Yeah, we should. Late conversations on the ledge, I’m up for that.”

Phil laughs at his eagerness. “You should sleep now, though,” he suggests. “Because it’s late and you’ve got school tomorrow.”

“So do you,” Dan points out smartly. Phil wonders if Dan’s just playing dumb, if the boy knows that at this point school’s become more of a choice for Phil than a compulsion, but he figures he’ll go tomorrow. For Dan. Whatever that means.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Dan says before disappearing back into his room. Phil stays on the ledge for a while longer, rests his head against the window and stares up at the sky. His heart is racing and he feels electric, alive. Relieved.

He sleeps well that night.

+

It becomes a thing after that. Their midnight conversations, Dan on his ledge and Phil on his own. Sometimes, when Phil walks past Dan and Amy in school, the brown-eyed boy purposely brushes their shoulders together, and Phil can’t help but marvel at how much he’s changed. How much he’s opened up, become bigger than the person he was when all Phil wanted to do was make him laugh, tuck a flower behind his ear, keep him warm.

“You were my first friend here, you know,” Dan confesses one night on the ledge. He’s got a blanket around his shoulders and looks so sweet, all wrapped up and cozy, it physically hurts for Phil to look at him for prolonged periods of time, but Phil looks at him now.

“Really?” he asks. In his chest, his heart thuds.

“Yeah, really.”

“I thought, thought that’d be Amy. You know?”

“Well, yeah.” Dan coughs awkwardly. “Besides Amy I guess.”

Phil smiles faintly, shakes his head. After a while of silence he says, “I’m glad we’re friends.”

“Yeah,” Dan says softly. “Me too, Phil.” A pause. “Are you cold?”

Phil’s about to shake his head, until he belatedly gets what Dan’s question might imply, and then he hastily forces himself to shiver. “Yeah, kind of.”

“C’mere, then.”

Phil runs a hand through his hair, then cautiously crawls across his ledge and onto Dan’s. He awkwardly positions himself beside Dan, his legs so long they stretch all the way down to the little gap between the two ledges, and then Dan’s wrapping the blanket around both of them and.

Yeah. This is nice.

Dan is a warm, small presence next to him, and he supposes he shouldn’t be too surprised when the boy leans into his chest and wraps the blanket tighter around them. “It’s cold, okay?” Dan says, voice muffled, and all Phil can do it shrug and hope his shoulders aren’t as bony as he thinks.

Right now, he could fall asleep this way.

+

The next week is Dan’s birthday, and Phil saves up some money to buy him a galaxy jumper. He’s never bought anyone a gift before in his life, is the thing, and for the longest time he isn’t sure if he should gift-wrap it or not, so in the end he just writes For Dan onto a piece of paper with a red sharpie and sticks it on.

The day’s almost over when Dan crawls out onto the ledge, and Phil’s out with him in an instant, crawling onto the ledge hastily and kind of throwing the package onto Dan’s lap. “Happy birthday,” he says, and has to try very hard not to bury his face in the sleeve of his hoodie out of embarrassment.

“Oh,” Dan says quietly. He pulls of the stupid For Dan label carefully and says, “You really didn’t have to get me anything,” and then he’s unfolding the jumper and holding it to his chest and saying, “Christ, Phil. This is beautiful, thank you so much.”

Phil shrugs and firmly tells his heart to stop racing. It doesn’t work. The jumper is baby blue and makes Dan look even softer when the boy pulls it on. The sleeves are long and cover his fists, and it’s oversized to the perfect degree. “It’s the best thing anyone’s ever given me,” Dan says. The earnestness in his eyes overwhelms Phil, and he doesn’t really know what to do with himself anymore so he. He.

He crawls onto Dan’s ledge and kneels in front of him, runs his hands down the soft fabric of Dan’s sleeves, cups Dan’s face in his palms and tips it up. Leans down. “Dan,” he says, and the boy’s eyelids flutter shut.

“Yeah,” Dan breathes softly.

“I’m going to kiss you now, okay?”

“Yeah,” Dan repeats.

So Phil closes the gap and presses their lips together.

Dan is warm and receptive, melting into Phil almost immediately, open and welcoming. He pulls Phil down, slides their lips together soundlessly, and they fit together. Perfectly. Dan on the ledge, Phil between his legs. Phil’s hands cupping Dan’s face, Dan’s fingers in his hair, stroking, pulling, he opens his mouth and the kiss gets wet, a little bit desperate. Everything is hot and warm and safe, and Phil feels himself begin to shake.

“Hey,” Dan’s saying. “Hey, are you okay?”

Phil nods, goes to kiss Dan’s cheeks and forehead when the boy pulls away. Then he stops and catches his breath, shuffles backwards a little so he can look at Dan properly. “I’m sorry,” he says once he’s stopped panting.

“No.” Dan shakes his head adorably. “No, don’t apologise for that, please.”

“You just. You just looked so fucking good, Dan.” Phil laughs, covers his face in his hands and feels rather pathetic.

“What can I say?” jokes Dan. “You’ve got wonderful taste in jumpers.” And then Dan’s tugging his hands away from his face and holding them in his. “You are wonderful,” he adds, softer.

“Yeah,” Phil whispers, not believing it for a moment. “You, too.”

They kiss a bit more, until it gets too cold and too late and Dan has to sleep because he plans on going to school tomorrow. Phil thinks about school, about seeing Dan tell Amy that bad boy Lester kissed him, and his head hurts. Maybe he won’t go tomorrow, he decides.

For Dan.

+

“Can I ask you something?” Dan says a night not too long later. He’s sitting on Phil’s bed, which is a first, and it’s almost 3AM, which is a first too.

“Go ahead,” Phil says cautiously, and then comes to kneel in between of Dan’s legs so that they’re face to face. He reaches up to stroke Dan’s cheek slowly with his thumb, unable to help himself. Now that he knows he can touch Dan whenever he wants he doesn’t really know how to stop. He doesn’t even want to, really.

Dan blushes under his thumb, sweet cherry red. “It’s just,” he begins, then stops. Starts over. “I was just. Wondering, you know?”

“Yeah?” Phil leans forward and brushes their lips together with the intention to distract Dan, not really wanting to know where this is going. “You should stop thinking,” he suggests lazily. “It’s too much of work. And, y’know, I’ve survived well enough avoiding it.”

“Stop,” Dan says laughingly and pushes him away. “No, come on, serious question time Phil.”

Phil reluctantly pulls away and settles on his haunches, looking up at Dan through his lashes. “Okay,” he says. “Go on, then.”

“Don’t look at me like that,” Dan says softly. And then he takes Phil’s hands in his and intertwines their fingers together and Phil doesn’t know how one person can be so beautiful, so sweet and perfect. “Do you like me?” Dan asks him, his eyes lowered.

“Yeah,” Phil breathes out.

“Like, do you, do you like-like me?” Dan carries on, sounding just a little bit breathless. Phil remains quiet, something tugging painfully in his chest. “Because I - “ Dan begins, and then Phil cuts him off with a kiss, something demanding and hard and unlike all the soft kisses they’ve already shared.

Dan breathes hard against his face, his mouth opening up without much delay, and Phil delves in quickly, curiously. He bites at Dan’s bottom lip and listens to the boy moan softly, and then he pushes Dan down onto his bed and sits carefully astride him. For a moment they pull apart, and Dan’s pupils are blown wide when Phil looks. It gives him the confidence to bite at Dan’s neck, purposefully enough to leave a mark, and Dan lets out a delicious little noise at that, soft and compliant. So Phil goes lower, mucks up Dan’s t-shirt and slips his fingers under Dan’s pants, rubs at the soft skin there.

“Can I?” he breathes against Dan’s neck, desperation taking over. There’s a part of him that’s saying he doesn’t have to do this, because everything will be confusing afterwards, and Dan will probably never look at him again, but fuck that, he thinks. Fuck it all to fucking hell. If this is the only night he ever gets Dan like this, spread out and willing underneath him, he’s going to take as much as he fucking can.

He’s so consumed in his thoughts he almost doesn’t see Dan nod, but he catches it just in time. Carefully, he drags his fingers downwards and pulls off Dan’s pants, and his senses are attacked immediately by his creamy thighs, his wet cock. Phil loses his breath, says something along the lines of “Jesus fucking Christ, Dan,” under his breath, and then he’s wrapping his hand around Dan’s cock and stroking it slowly.

“F-fuck,” Dan stutters quietly above him, and Phil thinks this might possibly be the first time he’s ever heard Dan swear and it drives him to stroke faster, pull him closer to the edge. He ignores his painful hard-on in his pants and concentrates on Dan’s heavy breathing, his meaningless stuttering, how spent he looks, eyes shut tight, hair a mess. When he comes, Phil can see every tense muscle in his body unwind, and he kisses the sigh out of Dan’s mouth, relishes in his moans and whimpers.

“What about you,” Dan breathes out, and Phil just shakes his head and rolls onto his back, tugs his pants down and jerks himself off quickly. He turns his head to look at Dan when he comes, and the boy looks so tired, so lazy and spent, and Phil knows this is the best orgasm he’ll probably ever have.

After, he pulls Dan towards the head of his bed and rests his head against his only pillow, leaving enough space on it for his own. He pulls the sheets over their bodies and circles his arms around Dan’s waist, pulls his back into his own chest. He listens as Dan’s breathing slows down, reaches a regular slow pace. He feels comforted by Dan’s presence next to him, his warmth and his familiarity. He thinks of what Dan had said, of what he’d almost said, and knows with certainty that Dan won’t ask him again. Not for a while.

Phil thinks maybe, one day, he’ll tuck a flower behind Dan’s ear and everything will be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> writers are inherently vain creatures. drop me a review, feed my egotistical self! (seriously though, tell me what you think of my fics please)
> 
> in other news, [my tumblr!](http://oopsiwritefanficdonttellmum)


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